Kavli Affiliate: Sara Seager
| First 5 Authors: Sara Seager, Janusz J. Petkowski, Christopher E. Carr, David Grinspoon, Bethany Ehlmann
| Summary:
The Venus Life Finder Missions are a series of focused astrobiology mission
concepts to search for habitability, signs of life, and life itself in the
Venus atmosphere. While people have speculated on life in the Venus clouds for
decades, we are now able to act with cost-effective and highly-focused
missions. A major motivation are unexplained atmospheric chemical anomalies,
including the "mysterious UV-absorber", tens of ppm O$_2$, SO$_2$ and H$_2$O
vertical abundance profiles, the possible presence of PH$_3$ and NH$_3$, and
the unknown composition of Mode 3 cloud particles. These anomalies, which have
lingered for decades, might be tied to habitability and life’s activities or be
indicative of unknown chemistry itself worth exploring. Our proposed series of
VLF missions aim to study Venus’ cloud particles and to continue where the
pioneering in situ probe missions from nearly four decades ago left off. The
world is poised on the brink of a revolution in space science. Our goal is not
to supplant any other efforts but to take advantage of an opportunity for
high-risk, high-reward science, which stands to possibly answer one of the
greatest scientific mysteries of all, and in the process pioneer a new model of
private/public partnership in space exploration.
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